All that you love will be carried away
by Raeth Xin
Summary: Rufus feels the emptiness of his heart. Reno struggles with the remains of his conscience. When things aren't as hopeful as they seem.
1. All that you love will be carried away

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Disclaimer: characters and places in this story are property of Squaresoft. The title is borrowed from the Stephen King short story of the same name.

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ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY

Chapter One: Rufus

Another gloomy day in Junon.

The skies outside the glass wall of his office were stormy and grey, promising rain but never quite delivering it. Everything was a pause at times like this, when the air was still and pressing, and everyone was on edge. People often had short tempers, and in the high altitude Shinra offices of Junon, short tempers could often be deadly. 

Rufus hated days like this. When the weather was bad and people were restless, his work piled up and it seemed his father would never just give up and die, these grey periods seemed to achieve a feeling of eternity. Like the paperwork on his desk, days like this just never seemed to end. 

He sat down at his desk with a sigh, glancing up at the grey skies above him and the greyer ocean below him and wondering when it would just give up and rain already. But the sky could (and would) wait, but of course his work wouldn't. 

He swivelled his chair back to his desk, ready to start the day's dealings with the eternal paper mountain before him. His secretary would have left the most important pile on the middle of his desk before going home, and it was this pile that he'd start this stupid day off with. 

In the middle of the ritual of picking up a pen and reaching for the papers, he suddenly froze. They weren't there. Instead of the usual 'must be signed' and 'initial here' papers he encountered every day, there was what had to be a strange, tasteless and totally weird joke. He pulled his hands back and studied what had been left on his desk. 

It was a single sheet of paper, unlined and stark in its contrast with the rest of the paper on his desk. It had only a single sentence (if it was a sentence, and it didn't have a full stop, so how could it be a sentence?) which had been centred and typed in huge, bold black capitals; 

****

ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY

and nothing else. Rufus stared at this strange, incomprehensible message for some time, before reaching out and turning the sheet over to see if there was anything on the back ('gotcha' maybe, or 'this is your fortune for today'). There was nothing. He turned it message side up again, and stared some more. The feeling of unreality that had pressed him all day grew stronger. It all felt like a dream, a dream of order and control and life while he was asleep in some strange alien reality. And it was all because of that message. Looking at it seemed to make this world waver before his eyes, it was as if he was stirring slightly in his sleep as the words were whispered in his ear. 

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How did it get here? he wondered, playing the charade of reality for all it was worth. It worked, a little. So he kept on doing it. Why would his secretary have left a message like this for him? She was the only one who had access to his office after he was gone, and he believed that she valued her life enough to avoid making tasteless jokes like this, especially on a day like this when everyone was on edge. 

A day like this: _of course! _he thought wildly. _It's the weather, everyone's gone crazy!_

He looked up sharply, as if expecting to see her hiding in a corner, behind the pot plant maybe, grinning insanely with a knife between her teeth and watching his puzzled response. There was no one there. But if she hadn't done it, then who? A burglar? that was stupid, and irrational besides. Burglars stole things, they didn't leave messages and not take anything. He looked around again to verify this thought; everything was in place. There wasn't much in here a burglar could carry away, and nothing looked disturbed. 

He looked down at the message again, and unreality washed over him again in a grey flood. Forget who, forget when, but why? And what did it mean? 

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Nothing, his mind said, that stoic defender of rationality._ Forget it and go back to work._

That was a good idea. He reached out to pick it up, then paused. _All that you love will be carried away_, he thought suddenly. Rufus leaned back in his chair and began to laugh. Hard. He rocked back and forth in his chair, head thrown back, howling with laughter while behind him the grey skies seethed and the ocean rolled. Even as he laughed harder than maybe he had in his entire life, he was surprised. _Is this me?_ he thought dimly. _What am I doing? I must look like an idiot!_

He calmed down slightly, laughter tapering off into chuckles, and then his eyes caught the message again and he lost it completely. Because it really was funny, he supposed, but in a mean, sarcastic kind of way. "Go ahead!" he yelled out to his empty office in between gales of laughter. "Take it all! I'm sure it won't be very much to carry!" He finished of this statement with another burst of maniacal laughter. But in his head it had ceased to become funny. In his head he saw not a piece of paper with a strange message, or even the grey, waiting sky. In his head he saw a desert, THE desert, an endless expanse of cracked, parched red earth that covered the world. Its skies were not blue but grey, as if the sun and heat had faded it into the drab no-colour that it was. This was a place where it had never rained and never would rain, a place where the grey waiting skies would wait their time into eternity and beyond. It was endless, unquenchable dryness and thirst, a place where all was dead and nothing would ever grow. Above this desert a merciless, boiling sun beat down, filling the desert with unimaginable heat. And all the time it was laughing, laughing at him, laughing just as insanely as he was now. But he just couldn't stop. 

And he saw himself in this desert, standing alone in his expensive white suit and immaculate boots, standing and looking out at nothing, at everything. looking out while the sun laughed and the heat rose and the words played out in his head like and insane melody: **ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY**. And it was no longer funny. 

Rufus finally managed to stop laughing, and brought himself back to reality- to the grey day, his grey office, and himself sitting in his chair gripping the edge of his desk so hard his knuckles were white. His stomach ached from his outburst, but at least it was over now. But the sense of unreality was not, and the stillness and silence of the early morning day seemed to stretch on forever. Like a desert. 

He fixed his eyes upon the message once more, but this time didn't laugh. "All that you love will be carried away," he said out loud. 

No, it wasn't funny anymore. He didn't like it, but more than that he was worried about the effect it had had on him. Had he lost his mind? It sure had sounded like it for a few minutes. Lucky that he was early, and the place was deserted. 

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And the desert, he thought with real worry. _What was that all about?_

But because on some level not too far below the surface he knew, he pushed aside the thought. he had to get rid of this stupid message, that was the first thing. And when Stacy got here, he'd fire her. Then this business would be over with. 

He reached out and picked up the paper, and waited, as if expecting that the feel of it in his hands would cause him to dissolve into laughter again. And if it did, he probably wouldn't ever stop, he'd just keep laughing as they carted him away to a nut-house. His father wouldn't be surprised at that. But it was just paper, and nothing happened. Rufus stood, firmly walked the six or so steps to his paper shredder, and turned it on. He could have crumpled the paper and put it in his bin, but the cleaners might have seen it. Anyone could have seen it. And it was dangerous. 

"They might think I'm crazy," he said aloud. As the green 'ready' light stopped blinking and held steady, he fed the sheet into the shredder, relishing the chewing sound of the paper being split into dozens of pieces. The worrying feeling of unreality, of being out of control, receded. the paper strips exited the machine and fell in a silent pile into the wire collection basket. 

Rufus walked back to his chair and sat down, feeling better than he had all day. Back in control, back in the world where there was paperwork and phone calls to make, and things to be done. _And secretaries to be fired_, he reminded himself. _Maybe even killed._

Stuff like that just wasn't funny. 

He reached for his gold-plated pen, ready to commence work, but stopped again. The feeling was back, and stronger than ever. The world was wavering, this was no longer his office but Purgatory, where everything was a desert and he was alone in it from end to end. 

But there was no end, of course, and on days like this when the world was still and grey, he could feel that reality was the desert, and this was just a dream he had fooled himself into believing. He lowered his trembling hand away from the pen, afraid to touch it. 

Afraid that the desert would be there. He folded his hands in front of him on the surface of the desk, but instead of feeling polished wood under his fingers, he felt paper. 

Rufus almost screamed aloud. Instead, he looked down with eyes so wide and strained it felt as if they were going to fall out of his head. As he lowered his head, his hair fell into his eyes, but he didn't push it back. He couldn't. And besides, he could see just fine. 

**ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY, **

the paper said. Rufus felt his strained mind trying to escape the fact of its existence, trying to convince himself that it was just his mind thinking it was there, and if he closed his eyes and opened them, it would be gone. 

Rufus closed his eyes tight and kept them shut. He was afraid to open them, but he did, and when he did he felt his body go limp with relief. 

The paper was gone. 

But he could still feel the unreality on him, creeping up on him like quicksand. He could struggle, but he couldn't escape. He was in the desert, after all. 

Rufus closed his eyes again. His head hurt, his thoughts were all in a wild roaring confusion. Control eluded him, and now he just wanted to sleep, to let everything fall away and cease to matter. But it just wasn't in his nature to give up. 

He opened his eyes. It was there again. 

He blinked. It was gone. With great difficulty, he turned his neck, feeling it creaking as he turned to look at the paper shredder. It was off, although he hadn't turned it off- both of its eyes, the green and the red, were dark. Rufus's own blue eyes moved down to the wire basket where the paper had fallen. It was empty. 

He slowly looked back at his desk again, where a neat pile of paperwork sat, ready and waiting for him to start his daily ritual. Had it been there all along? He wasn't sure. 

Rufus stared at his desk, and thought about dry sand, and laughing suns, and the unbearable heat that radiates from everything and everywhere in a desert, the heat which never quits but only seems to grow. 

He thought about a desert which covered the world. It _was_ the world. And he was in it, wasn't he? Even here, in his office, where all the purposeful and important work of his life went on, hell, where _all_ of his life went on, he was still in the desert. Everything he loved had already been carried away, and that meant that everything had been left behind. It was all as useless and worthless as dry desert dust. 

The phone rang. Rufus ignored it. Instead he gazed blankly down at his hands, now refolded on the desk before him. He looked at his hands and thought about the desert while the phone continued to ring, unheeded. And in the silence of his empty office, it sounded 

like laughter. 

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I like to think of this one as interpretive. Make of it what you will - and please let me know what you think. Read and review, folks.


	2. Don't Look Up Here, You're Pissing On Yo...

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Disclaimer: all characters, locations and events belong to Squaresoft. Title and graffiti from the Stephen King short story 'All that you love will be carried away'. I recommend reading that one- it's got a strange, disturbing tone that inspired my story as much as the graffiti itself. 

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ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY

Chapter Two: Reno

Some people had a funny sense of humour, Reno thought. This thought struck him in a place where profound thoughts are a dime a dozen- in a shithouse covered in graffiti. A slum shithouse, to be specific. A dingy, ill-lit, no-colour room of stench and filth, the usual coda to the seedy bars of the sector seven slums. They were all so alike and familiar that Reno always felt that they must have been mass-produced in the same ugly factory. Even the graffiti was often the same, recycled from slum shithouses all over Midgar. Reno had seen most of it; he even had believed that he might have seen it all. But this was different. 

He dropped his eyes back to the urinal he was standing at- cracked, yellow, and definitely in its last days of usefulness- and looked again at the red arrow. If it was anything, he supposed, it was cruel. A cruel joke to play on drunks and stoners and the plain old dredges of Midgar society. But who was he to judge cruelty? And it wouldn't matter to these people for much longer anyway.

He took a step back from the decaying urinal, zipping his fly as he did. His eyes were still fixed upon the red arrow. It had been spray painted onto the wall directly above the urinal, at exact eye level to Reno (or any other poor shmuck who took a leak at that particular station). A screamingly bright red arrow, pointing upwards. You just had to look. Human nature dictated it.

About two feet above the first arrow, another was sprayed onto the wall. This one pointed upwards as well, its tip just below the cobweb-filled join between wall and roof. On the roof itself, a third arrow, quite short this time, directed your eyes directly over your own head. There, displayed in that gruesomely bright red paint which reduced all other graffiti in the room dingy, the message was displayed in cheery capitals. 

**DON'T LOOK UP HERE, YOU'RE PISSING ON YOUR SHOES**,

It said. 

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Yeah, that's funny all right, Reno thought as he stepped around an unconscious heap snoring soddenly by the door and pushed it open. 

The bar proper wasn't much an improvement from the bathroom, he mused as he strolled casually towards the door. A few tables crowded with dirty drunks, an argument over in the corner that was progressing towards a fistfight, a bar staffed by what looked like cheap hookers. He noticed also that people seemed to shrink away from him as he passed, eyes dropping and conversations wilting into silence. There was nothing unusual about that, of course, he was a Turk, and his blue Turk uniform (although a trifle scruffy) was a symbol of fear. But that was alright, because they should be afraid, Reno believed. If they knew what was coming courtesy of the masters of their city (and hand delivered by yours truly) that fear would only grow like poisoned fruit. 

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That's how you can tell when you're drunk, he thought as he stepped out from the bar into the night air. _You start making strange analogies like 'poisoned fruit'. _He chuckled slightly and walked on, not really caring where he was going, just letting his feet move in one direction and his booze-propelled brain move in another. His feet moved him past slum houses and black market materia stores, dirty houses and equally dirty occupants. It was no different from the slums in any of the other sectors, but tonight Reno wanted only to wander sector seven. After all, tomorrow he would be squashing it flat, complete with its occupants. He walked and he looked and yet he saw nothing, nothing that would stir or even disturb him in tomorrow's deed. 

What he was really thinking about was the strange graffiti. 

Probably just more drunken philosophising, but Reno was finding himself more and more intrigued by the sneaky little bit of graffiti that had almost caused him to ruin his own shoes. Don't Look Up Here, You're Pissing On Your Shoes. How perfectly it summed up everything that was sector seven. Reno glanced up at the plate so far above, the plate where people lived in dreamlike luxury. Most people down here didn't bother to even look up at the plate, didn't bother to really ponder the barrier Shinra had placed over the sky. And what good was it? What good could it do them to always look above to where the better half lived, to live in envy and jealousy and greed of the people who had it all and had stolen the sky and the air? All the while they were looking up in envy and hate, more likely than not they were pissing on their own shoes. Granted, the life that went on down here was never pretty and always hard, but it was still life. Looking up and spending their days bitching about the Shinra (a national slum pastime) got them nowhere. Except maybe an early funeral. 

But then again, maybe a little more looking up would warn them that the distance between them and the world above was going to get a lot smaller very soon. The thought made Reno snicker. 

His feet carried him past streets and alleys that all looked alike, filled by people who looked alike and even seemed to be covered in the same dirt. And of course, their faces all held the same expression of fear and hate and awe. He was from Above; more than that he was from the fearful high echelons of Shinra itself, a place people on the plates even feared to look up to. But this was different; down here was different. Here everything was all the same, all the same ugly parody of life. If anything, having a plate dropped on their heads would break up the monotony. 

"Don't look up here," Reno muttered to himself. "The Shinra are pissing on your heads." He stopped in front of yet another bar, but it could have been the one he had just been in for all its difference. Same splintered, sagging wooden stairs, same crooked and peeling door. The only noticeable difference was it's name- not Bar 7 but Seventh Heaven. 

He briefly considered going in, then decided against it. Another few drinks and he may well end up trumpeting information people down here weren't supposed to know. At least until it was too late to matter. Yet he lingered outside the bar for a moment, looking at everything and seeing nothing. Nothing of importance, anyway, nothing to make him wonder if what he was about to do was a wrong beyond comprehension, nothing to make him care even if it was. Maybe that made him a monster. More likely it just made him a Turk, another good little Shinra drone. As he stood thinking, the front door of the bar burst open and an ugly drunken brawl spilled out. The two fighters staggered and stumbled down the stairs, punching and cursing. People seemed to spill onto the scene from all directions, some joining in, others yelling encouragement, but most just standing and staring with blank looks of unsurprised absence. Reno was, for a moment, invisible from his position beside the wooden stairs. But he could see perfectly, could see the knives coming out, the screams starting. And still the people stared at the action and ignored him. Why not? It was human nature, after all. They were looking at THE SCENE OF THE CRIME, while above them, the real crime was still about to happen. And this one made their knives and guns look like matchsticks, their thin screams like so much empty wind. 

The REAL crime was still going on.

Reno dodged the fight by slipping around the back of the bar and into a narrow alley. He had seen enough, now it was time to go back up. He moved through alleys and streets filled with rubbish and homeless people, and Reno became aware that he was in a timeless, spaceless void of sameness and eternity, a world that could only be known as Slumworld. It didn't really matter at all, he realized, not if he dropped all the plates on their heads. This world could not be extinguished by anyone; it was eternity. As long as there's people, there's going to be slum people to look down on. And kill occasionally, when the odd terrorist faction came along unhappy with how everything was going. 

Reno finally reached it's border; the end of Slumworld and the beginning of the world of Shinra. There was the fence, the guard station, and the gleaming silver elevator that would take him out of this world and back above. Reno stepped out of the alley and strolled languidly (and a little crookedly) towards the gate. The guards, recognizing the blue suit instantly, rolled the gate back for him. No questions required for a Turk. Reno entered the enclosure, but couldn't help a glance back at the world he was soon to extinguish. From the brightly lit guard's enclosure, the entrance to the sector seven slums was dark and empty and not a bit sinister. It was just a crappy place where the poor people had been banished into by Shinra. If it was a Slumworld at all, it was because the Shinra had made it into one. Reno continued toward the elevator, for the first time all night feeling a twinge of foreboding. He wouldn't question his job, he wouldn't hesitate, but there was still that twinge. As he waited for the elevator to descend from above, that twinge seemed to grow. 

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What are you doing Reno? a voice in his head seemed to ask- the voice of rationality, perhaps, or maybe just a leftover remnant of humanity. _What are you going to do?_

The elevator doors opened in front of him, and for a moment Reno hesitated. What was doing? Why? Because it was his _job?_ What kind of a bullshit justification was that? 

"One that helps me keep sleeping," he murmured to himself; but the words didn't work, he was still unable to decide. His feet seemed rooted to the spot in front of the elevator, and still the open doors beckoned him. _Come inside,_ they seemed to say. _We'll take you up above, and you can leave all these worries down here. _

Still Reno paused. Could he do it? Could he just step in, feel nothing, and tomorrow destroy this world? He glanced back at the dark alley. He wouldn't be able to hide there, he knew that. There was nowhere on this earth far enough from the Shinra to hide, and no one who would hide him. If he was to consider this crazy idea of rebellion, he had to be a realist- running would mean death, probably at the hands of his fellow Turks. 

The doors still waited patiently for him to decide. The guards in the station probably thought he was nuts, but he didn't care. He was still trying to decide. What was he going to do?

In his indecision he glanced up- and froze. There, over the elevator doors, was a single, cheerily bright red arrow. 

It was pointing upwards.

Reno felt his flesh break out in goosebumps, and he shivered. It was beyond creepy, and had to be more than coincidence. Didn't it?

Either way, the sight of that lone and somehow ominous red arrow decided him. The moment of indecision passed. Who was he to question his job anyway? It was a pretty good job, as far as they went. He was just a messenger boy in this whole business, but Reno wasn't going to deny his part in it. The arrow was painted in red, after all. The bright scarlet of fresh blood. 

Reno paused a second longer, even though his mind was made up. He craned his neck up, following the path of the arrow. His eyes came to rest upon the plate, the metal ceiling the Shinra had placed over the world. 

"Don't look up here, you're pissing on your shoes," he said out loud. It sounded cold and final, like the final sentence of a death warrant. And that was all it took. 

Reno looked back down just in time to realise the elevator doors were closing. He lunged and grabbed the edge of a door, and they opened again reluctantly. He'd had a moment of craziness, but he'd come to his senses in enough time to make it before the elevator closed on him. With no further hesitation, Reno stepped inside. The doors closed immediately after him, and he was glad. There were only three buttons in this elevator- one that took you to the plate level, one which took you back down to the slums, and a large red one- the emergency stop button. The numbers on the first two buttons were gone, replaced by red arrows. Reno was not a bit surprised. The third button no longer read 

EMERGENCY STOP,

Instead it was now

COWARD'S WAY OUT.

Still, Reno was not surprised at the change. In fact, he was relieved. He was dreaming, and crazy stuff like this always happened in your dreams. He reached out and pressed the arrow which pointed upwards- back up to the plates. As he ascended he watched the buttons with a total lack of surprise. 

Every now and then the arrows would disappear, and change to numbers, or symbols, or all sorts of strange other things, captioned by the ever-shifting words on the emergency stop button. It was like the elevator was giving him messages. Creepy messages, but of course this was all a dream.

An open red eye on the first button, a closed red eye on the other. The emergency stop button had somehow become green, and funnily enough the single word on it was now RED. It made no sense, but then again it made perfect sense. Things always seemed to in dreams.

The messages had changed again, now the buttons showed a red zero on one and a strange red blob on the second, a blob which after some squinting Reno decided was half a face. The emergency stop button was red again, but the word on it was now GREEN.

Even as he looked at it, the words changed; now it said BOTH EYES OFF.

Reno briefly grasped the meaning of this little charade, but it slipped from his grasp. The button now said

MURDERER.

That one was clear enough. Reno could feel his flesh crawling again, and that worried him, because now he wasn't sure if he was dreaming at all. He pinched himself, shutting his eyes to block out the image of carnage and bodies and death and anguish somehow depicted perfectly on those two little buttons, those two little buttons that should have been numbers. Mostly he did it to escape that glaring, hideous and somehow perfectly true slogan. MURDERER. And that was what he was, wasn't he? This wasn't assassination or a hit or anything so removed or mundane. This was not murder but MURDER, on a scale so large it deserved the capitals. 

Then there was a scream. Reno's eyes flew open, and he almost yelled out himself, before he realised it had just been the sound of the elevator doors opening. He looked at the wall of the elevator and saw the black '2' button which signified the plate level was lit up. The button marked '1' was dark, and-

Reno paused. The red button now said

DON'T LOOK NOW, YOU'RE SELLING YOUR SOUL

Which was stupid, because that much writing simply couldn't fit on a button that size. Of course it couldn't, which was why the writing on the button really said EMERGENCY STOP, just like it had all along. The dreamy feeling had dissipated with the rusty shriek of the doors opening, and Reno was finding it hard to remember what exactly had happened in the elevator on his way up. All he knew was that it had been extremely creepy, and he didn't want to still be in here when the doors closed again. Reno stepped out of the elevator and into true night, night where there was a real sky above with real stars (hard to see through the smog, but still there). He heard the doors close behind him, and it sounded even more like a scream than it had before. But that was okay, because he had made his choice, he'd followed the arrow, and he'd just have to live with the consequences. 

Reno made his way back towards the Shinra building. Once he was back there, he'd catch some sleep and maybe forget that this whole night had happened at all.

He reached the entrance, then stopped short. The entrance doors were open in front of him, and his access card was already in his hand, but he saw none of those things. What he was looking at was the sign beside the entrance, a sign he'd probably looked at a thousand times before but never actually _seen. _

Below the words 'Welcome to Shinra Headquarters, Midgar' was a red arrow pointing towards the doors. Reno had an idea that this was the last arrow, because after all this was where they all ultimately pointed. 

And you just couldn't help but look where the arrows pointed.

"Don't look up here," Reno said aloud as he stepped into the building. His eyes were far away. "You won't be able to look away."

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Well, this chapter turned out even weirder than the Rufus one, I think. I wasn't really planning on linking the chapters, but see if you can spot where I did….

Anyways, let me know what you made of it. Reviews are always appreciated.

Next chapter: Cloud, most likely. About time I got started on the Avalanche bunch. 


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